o hand in hand

about a week or so ago, i finished kindred, by octavia butler. and i've been trying to figure out how to express what what so impressive about it. i don't think i've quite done that, but here are a few thoughts anyway...

kindred is a book with a structurally (i must add: deceptively) simple premise: a black woman named dana is transported from her 1976 home in los angeles on her 26th birthday to the antebellum south (maryland in 1812, i believe). she is summoned to protect rufus, a white son of a slaveowner who will prove to be her ancestor. when rufus finds his life threatened, he involuntarily summons dana, and her only means of escape back to the 70's is through finding her own life in danger (i.e. if someone or something convinces her she is about to die). through a series of dilemmas and horrors, dana becomes a kind of guardian angel to rufus, appearing and re-appearing throughout the first twenty or so years of his life. accordingly, she finds herself victim to the atrocities which were then commonplace to a woman of color.

one might imagine the criteria that a premise such as butler's might engage. but what is less imaginable is the astounding complexity with which she renders the infinite layers of dana's predicament. this is a book read not only with one's conscience, but with one's gut. if it is science fiction, it is a sort of inverse science fiction-- the kernel of "fantasy" is precisely the element which denies the reader the distance of factual "history." there is the obvious connection of time itself-- i.e. dana's sense of shock at being forced to endure an unfamiliar (and totally reprehensible) social structure. but butler is not satisfied with that, and the overlapping histories of "white" and "black" that emerge address a very nuanced variety of racial assumptions and inter-personal relations. rufus, for example, becomes both appalling and tragic as dana's periodic appearances reveal the environmental constructs of his behavior, as well as his personal path towards bullying, cowardice and conflicted desire. the erosion of his sense of compassion is rendered with unflinching precision. the result amounts to neither sympathy nor complete antagonism.

beyond all of this, it is written with a concise rawness-- a kind of no-bullshit momentum that made me simultaneously queasy and deeply eager as i moved from page to page. i'm a terrible reader-- easily distracted, miserably slow-- and it's rare that i'm ever this profoundly engaged by a novel.

i don't want to say too much about this book, other than read it if you never have. i hope i don't sound like mr. noble-white-man in saying that in reading kindred i feel infinitely more aware of the poverty inherent within my own ability to comprehend this deep lineage of american history. it has (hopefully) sharpened something, on an emotional level, within me.